Google

CC friends and fans in the Bay Area: we hope you can join us next week at our ccSalon, when, in the spirit of Open Source World, we’ll hear about CC and open source technology from our three presenters for the evening:

When: Wednesday, August 12, 7-9pm
Location: PariSoMa, 1436 Howard St. (map and directions). Plenty of street parking available. (Please note, the space is located up two steep flights of stairs, and unfortunately does not currently have elevator access.)

We hope you can join us at the next ccSalon SF! In the spirit of Open Source World (taking place in San Francisco that week), we’ll hear about CC and open source technology from our three presenters for the evening:

When: Wednesday, August 12, 7-9pm
Location: PariSoMa, 1436 Howard St. (map and directions). Plenty of street parking available. (Please note, the space is located up two steep flights of stairs, and unfortunately does not currently have elevator access.)

Light refreshments will be provided, and since we rely on the generosity of our community to keep us afloat, we’ll be accepting donations for CC at the door.

To filter by CC search, go to Google’s advanced Image Search page and select the options you’d like in the “Usage rights” section. Your results will be restricted to images marked with CC licenses or other compatibly licensed photos.

Remember, Google can only provide search results that its algorithms find tagged with the license you specify; it is your obligation to verify the license of the image you’re using and make sure you’re conforming to its guidelines.

This is a huge step forward for the future of image search on the web, so congratulations to the Google team on another great CC implementation!

One week ago I asked for support in helping us reach our $500,000 goal. At that time, we had $12,000 left to raise with only 2 1/2 days left in the campaign, and we were all wondering how we were going to make it. Today, I’m proud to say that our community went above and beyond — raising CC a grand total of $525,383.73.

I want to send a special thank you to all of the individuals and companies that are long time supporters of CC. We’ve had hundreds of people continue to support CC over the years and I wish I could thank each and everyone of you publicly for your continued support. However, I don’t want to take up the entire CC main page, so please know how appreciated your commitment to CC is. To Digital Garage, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Tucows, Consumer Electronics Association, and wikiHow, thank you for your continued commitment to CC – I look forward to working with each of your companies in bringing more global awareness about CC, and I feel confident that together we will continue to enrich the digital commons we’re all investing in.

And to all the new individuals and new corporate supporters (Attributor, DotAsia, Ebay, Nevo Technologies, Safe Creative) – thank you for choosing to support CC this year. CC is only as strong as the community that supports it and we’re thrilled to see this community thriving. Think of all we can do over the next year by coming together and supporting each other.

Thank you all from the bottom of my (and the rest of the CC staff’s) heart — we know how difficult it is right now and are deeply honored that you would choose to support CC this year. This doesn’t just help us continue our work but also reaffirms the growing strength of our community and the belief in a more fair and accessible digital world.

The CC staff, the board of directors, and I all look forward to what will surely be an exciting 2009.

In hopes of helping to make the Web a safer place, we decided to release our Browser Security Handbook to the general public. This 60-page document provides a comprehensive comparison of a broad set of security features and characteristics in commonly used browsers, along with (hopefully) useful commentary and implementation tips for application developers who need to rely on these mechanisms, as well as engineering teams working on future browser-side security enhancements.

Although this may sound dry, the handbook is effectively a highly readable and fascinating explanation of many of the reasons the web and web browsers work as they do. Highly recommended for deep reading by anyone remotely involved in web development, and for skimming by everyone else.

Hopefully publication under the most liberal CC license, allowing republication, modification, and commercial use, so long as credit is given, will help this important content find its way into developer, educational, and training resources around the world.

Just a quick reminder that applications for Creative Commons’ Google’s Policy Fellowship for this coming summer are due December 12th, so if you haven’t applied yet, don’t miss the deadline!

The Google Policy Fellow will receive a substantial grant to work at Creative Commons on the following issues (but this is certainly not an exhaustive list of the things we’ll have you thinking about):

Write case studies about projects and creators that have implemented Creative Commons licenses and analyze strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for each; paying particular consideration to cultural and genre differences.

Synthesize statistics garnered from recent studies focusing on international license adoption. Fellow will be expected to generate and investigate diverse theses relating to license choice, adoption, and use.

Coordinate with counsel to critically analyze the current state of public domain policy in US and abroad. Develop a framework to help Creative Commons’ deploy messaging regarding public domain policy in US and abroad.

Survey the current legal and non-legal opinions with respect to the ‘strong vs. weak’ copyleft debate and how it relates to differences between mediums (photography, music, etc.) in order to establish guidelines and uncover precedent for our ShareAlike licenses.

Research and analysis of how contemporary the discourse of copyright, sharing, reuse, and remix has been shaped over the last six years as a result of the Creative Commons project.

We’re very excited to announce that Creative Commons will be part of Google’s Policy Fellowship for this coming summer. The Google Policy Fellow will receive a substantial grant to work at Creative Commons on the following issues (but this is certainly not an exhaustive list of the things we’ll have you thinking about):

Write case studies about projects and creators that have implemented Creative Commons licenses and analyze strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for each; paying particular consideration to cultural and genre differences.

Synthesize statistics garnered from recent studies focusing on international license adoption. Fellow will be expected to generate and investigate diverse theses relating to license choice, adoption, and use.

Coordinate with counsel to critically analyze the current state of public domain policy in US and abroad. Develop a framework to help Creative Commons’ deploy messaging regarding public domain policy in US and abroad.

Survey the current legal and non-legal opinions with respect to the ‘strong vs. weak’ copyleft debate and how it relates to differences between mediums (photography, music, etc.) in order to establish guidelines and uncover precedent for our ShareAlike licenses.

Research and analysis of how contemporary the discourse of copyright, sharing, reuse, and remix has been shaped over the last six years as a result of the Creative Commons project.

This week Google threw its hat into the photo-commons ring with by announcing its newly upgraded Picasa Web Albums service. Users of Picasa now have the option to individually license their photos on the site under any of our six licenses, and can also set their profile to default to a particular one:

Just look for edit button next to the “All Rights Reserved” text on the right side of any photo page, and the “Photo Usage & Licensing” section in your profile settings (requires Google Account) to set a default license.

Google recently launched Google Doctype, a wiki-style encyclopedia for web developers of the open web, a “web built on open standards: HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and more.” Anyone with a Google account can contribute and edit. Currently, the wiki consists of HOWTO articles on web security, DOM manipulation, CSS and style, tips and tricks—in addition to code for developers.

All articles, reference pages and other prose content is licensedCC BY.